How To Make A Collage in Gimp

04/25/2011

Gimp is a free photo editing program. Basically a free version of photoshop {minus some bells and whistles}. You can download gimp for free here! I’m going to show you how to make a collage similar to this one.This is a fun way to organize pictures in your blog post, especially if you have a lot of pictures you would like to share!

Now lets get started!

You can click on any picture you see it bigger.

Open Gimp > File > New > Set Width and Height to whatever size you want. I am going to use 600 x 400. Change the x and y resolution to 300. Set “fill with” to background color.

Now go to file > open as layer. Find the first picture you want to use and push ok.

Your picture will probably be huge.

Now click on the “layers tab” on the tool panel.

Now right click on the layer that has your picture. Choose “scale layer”

Change the width to 400.

When you click in the height box it will automatically adjust to keep the right proportions for your picture.

The press scale.

Now we need to move the picture to where we want it.

We need to select the “move” icon in the toolbar.

Now click on you picture and drag it to where you want it.

Now I am going to open another picture.

File > Open as Layer > Add your picture.

Then right click on the layer > scale layer.

This time I am going to make the width 200 and the height 150.

I want my picture to be rotated so I am going to click the “rotate tool”

Click on the picture. This box will pop up.

Rotate -90 degrees.

Now move the picture {click the move tool}

Now open your next picture.

File > open as layer.

Right click on the layer > scale layer

This time I am doing width: 100 and height: 113

Now I am going to use the “crop tool” to cut off the extra background space.

Now use the cursor to highlight the area you want to keep.

Then click inside the area you are keeping.

Now let’s add some text! Click the “text tool”

Now click and make a box. It doesn’t matter where it is or how big it is.

Type your text.

You can change the font by clicking the tab that has “Aa”

Once you pick your font you can change the size by clicking back on the “text tab”

You can move your text by clicking and dragging.

Now I am going to make one final crop.

Ta da! Now you have a picture collage.

To save:

File > Save As >

type your file name and add .jpg to the end

There are so many ways to use gimp!

Experiment & have fun!

If you have any questions or get stuck at all leave a comment or email me.

Well hey!
I was looking for a way to do this last night and when I Googled it, your blog popped up! Too funny and neat, seeing as your designing a custom design for me come January:) Thanks for this tutorial and for making it look so simple; which it was!

I don’t need a lot of bells and whistles but since picnik.com went away, I was dying to find another way to edit my photos and stuff. Thank you so much for the tutorial. I’ll be using this for my blog and for photos at work!

Well, all I have to say is just about what everyone said! :)) But I will also add my own thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! Very well explained & opens up soooo many new possibilities for me, in numerous future creative pursuits!!! VERY pleased & grateful :))

You can save it as a .jpg by just adding .jpg at the end of the file name when you are saving it. And to remove the line you can just grab it when you are using the marquee tool and move it over :) hope that helps!

Greetings from Idaho! I’m bored to death at work so I decided to check out your
blog on my iphone during lunch break. I really like the
info you provide here and can’t wait to take a look when I get home.
I’m amazed at how fast your blog loaded on my phone ..

When I initially commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get four e-mails with the
same comment. Is there any way you can remove people from that service?
Bless you!

A big thank you for a very simple to follow tutorial, I have been tearing my hair out at other tutorials as they have been quite complicated. I just finished my first collage for a dear friend and it only took about 20 minutes to do. I shall be visiting your site more often.